Over the years, reports into deaths of children as a result of undetected abuse abounded and miscommunication between professionals who are expected to detect such abuse kept identified as a key issue. Consequently, statutory partnerships were introduced in 2004 with the view to create an integrated workforce able to detect the early signs of harm. Yet in the wake of the 'Baby P' crisis in November 2008, it has become apparent that the issues are persistent. The research problem addressed in this research is the need to understand how the effectiveness of service provider network partnerships might be improved, in order to reduce the potential for implementation failure of social policies concerning children. The research strategy chosen to unravel issues that could enable such understanding is a case study of partnership working in a Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB). The empirical research techniques used were directed at answering three specific research questions: • How are lessons from adverse events learned by human service professionals? • How might integrated work be improved? • How does the context in which the LSCBs are embedded shape the barriers and the motivators of integrated work? These questions were derived from a rigorous, multi-disciplinary review of the literature areas with relevance to the research problem. The case study has revealed that every partnership member is shaped by, and loyal to, three sets of influences: those from their upbringing and psychological effects of their work, those from their professional education and those from their organisational environment. In partnership interactions, these three levels interact dynamically first within each of the partnership members, and then, indirectly, across the partnership structure. The issue of improving partnership working then becomes reduced to striking a balance between the issues that could constitute barriers to collaboration and those which could become catalysts of integrated work, across each and all of the three levels of analysis. A number of factors were identified in the case study as potentially constituting either obstacles or motivators in collaborations. These issues were then discussed into the wider context of the public sector work and the need for 'safer' practices in children and young people's policy area.